Commentary: Heterodox Journalism in the Ivy League

August 09, 2024 1 min read

Lexi Boccuzzi
City Journal

Excerpt: By February of this year, my frustration with the biased coverage of the Daily Pennsylvanian, the University of Pennsylvania’s legacy student publication, had become irreconcilable. The paper’s leadership had consistently employed an ideological tilt to shape campus discourse, with their reporting of the protests following the October 7 terrorist attacks on Israel and their strongly discouraging or outright censoring my probes into Penn’s draconian Covid-19 regulations being two prime examples.

The lock-step orthodoxy enforced by many elite-school papers should come as no surprise, given their staffs’ typical ideological makeup. In its 2023 Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Belonging (DEIB) report, the Daily Princetonian found that 90.2 percent of its editors identified as “left-wing.”

Click here for link to full article

Leave a comment


Also in Princeton Free Speech News & Commentary

Student Leaders Champion Free Speech as Princeton Open Campus Coalition Celebrates a Decade of Defending Expression

October 04, 2025 3 min read

Amelia Freund
Princetonians for Free Speech

My name is Amelia Freund and I am honored to be serving as President of the Princeton Open Campus Coalition (POCC) this year. An Army brat hailing from the DC-Maryland-Virginia area, I am a member of the great class of 2028, the Butler College Class Council, and the Politics Department. In high school I read On Liberty by John Stuart Mill several times over in my philosophy courses, each time I found it engaging and inspirational. I was particularly drawn in by Mill’s defense of free speech. He believed that for an idea to be true, it must be continuously discussed and debated, requiring broad protections for civic discourse. His argument resonated with me a great deal, and has carried me to countless engagements with freedom of speech since then, both in and out of the classroom. 

Read More
Commentary: By the way, Fizz is not real life

October 01, 2025 1 min read

Isaac Barsoum 
Daily Princetonian

Excerpt: Leftists at Princeton cheer the assassination of Charlie Kirk — at least, that’s what you would think if you’ve been reading the Opinion section of this newspaper lately. On Sept. 17, Tigers for Israel President Maximillian Meyer ’27 declared that Princeton’s progressives exhibit “a willingness to cheer violence itself.” Princeton Tory Publisher Zach Gardner ’26 didn’t go quite so far, but did say that students “treat bloodshed flippantly,” at least in the context of Kirk’s assassination.

Here’s one problem: large portions of both their arguments rest on evidence drawn from Fizz. For the uninitiated, Fizz is a campus social media app where any Princeton student can say anything at all, true or false, behind the veil of anonymity. It is remarkable that I have to say this: Fizz is not real life.

Read More
In ‘Terms of Respect,’ Eisgruber attempts to set the higher education record straight

October 01, 2025 1 min read

Cynthia Torres
Daily Princetonian 

Excerpt: About three-quarters of the way into an interview with The Daily Princetonian, University President Christopher Eisgruber ’83 made a bold pronouncement: “American universities are the best that they’ve ever been.”

Eisgruber has been in the business of speaking up for universities since the beginning of the Trump administration, which has put unprecedented pressure on Princeton and its peer institutions. His new book, “Terms of Respect,” argues, as the book’s subtitle reads, “how colleges get free speech right.” Despite the perception of intolerance on American college campuses, Eisgruber writes, colleges still host thriving and robust discourse.

Read More